Huwebes, Enero 26, 2017

“Pin-head o mahina rin ang utak nitong
senator na ito,” this what I quipped after I read the Face Book’s post on
the proposed death penalty bill of Senator Risa Hontiveros published by
Politics.com.ph.

Hontiveros
assailed the proposed death penalty passed by the House of Representatives that
she and her Liberal Party’s colleague wanted to torpedo after it reached at the
Senate.

TOP BRASS. From left Philippine National Police's Director General Ronald dela Rosa and Senator Panfilo Lacson. Photo Credit: Meme Buster

“Death penalty is a cruel, inhumane and degrading
punishment, which has a disproportionate impact on the poor and little
guarantee that innocent people, would not be sentenced to death,” Hontiveros
wrote and was quoted by the Liberal Party’s friendly website.

In that
article, Politics.com.ph posted a poster of national hero Dr. Jose Rizal and
the three activist priests Fathers Mariano Gomez, José Burgos,
and Jacinto Zamora, called as Gomburza for brevity by Filipinos, who were
victims of death penalty by quoting Hontiveros’ comment “simply for standing up for equal rights, freedom and democracy.”

My
reaction: How could those convicted felons killed by
a firing squad, lethal injection, electric chair, guillotine, or by the noose
that needs only somebody to kick the stool
where the convicted criminal
stands, according to another “intellectual giant” Senator Manny Pacquiao,
so this forsaken, soft, and criminal
friendly country could save for electricity when the poor convict would be
given due process and free lawyer from the Public Attorney’s Office or PAO and
after his conviction by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) his case would have an
automatic review by the Supreme Court?

Death
Penalty is justifiable than the government’s gauntlet hand policy on “shooting
it out with the suspected hard core criminals” at a drop of a hat or
arbitrarily extra judicially killing them.

We should
get rid of this kind of death as it already reached the 6,000 mark after
President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office middle of last year.

Let’s
legalized execution by creating more RTCs so death would have due process.

How Jose
Rizal and GomBurZa became victims because they stood “simply for standing up
for equal rights, freedom and democracy” as espoused by Hontiveros, could not
get my comprehension.

What kind
of logic is that Politics.com.ph and Senator Hontiveros?

Dangerous
drug lords whose products turned a human being into a monster like being a robber,
kidnapper, or rapist who mercilessly killed their victim did not stand for
equal rights, freedom, and democracy.

Biyernes, Enero 20, 2017

Skeptics on
President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on illegal drugs compared Thailand’s war on
narcotics where almost 3,000 died in the First Drug War in February to April
2003 and countless died in the Second Drug War in 2005.

AUTHOR TOOK THIS PHOTO. Ricky Cornel holds affectionately the face

of
his older brother Piggie, 43, who was slain by the police in a drug

sting operation
early of July last year in Dagupan City. Ricky and Piggie

submitted themselves
a week earlier as pusher and user of shabu (meth) to the

village chief of Bonuan
Gueset and made a promissory note that they

would avoid narcotics. Piggie,
however, was caught by the police with a

notorious pusher in a motel room
selling shabu and fought out with the

police that resulted to their being
shot to death.

Despite the
thousands of persons killed in Thailand
and those 6000 individuals who died in legitimate police operation and those on
Death Under Investigation (D.U.I) in the
Philippines war on dangerous drugs, these skeptics say Duterte’s war on
narcotics is destined to fail.

But as a radio
commentator and journalist who visit regularly city and town mayors and chiefs
of police in the 48 cities and towns’ Pangasinan, I could say that the
dangerous drugs war launched by the Duterte Administration are picking up and
resulted to significant drop not only of drug pushing and using but of index
crimes like theft, robbery, and other petty crimes.

In Alaminos
City, Police
Chief Superintendent Benjamin Ariola cited recently that only two of the 39
villages in this Western Pangasinan city are still not illegal drug free.
Dagupan City’s Chief of Police Superintendent
Neil Miro declared in January 12 the city as 90.2 percent after narcotics
prevalent Barangay Pantal and Pogo Chico of the 31 villages’ city were publicly
announced as drug free.

Huwebes, Enero 12, 2017

I just saw an ugly public official with big
lips, protruding upper teeth, flat nose, big eye glasses, fat belly, and
crumpled dress. Those downsides could be exaggerated on a cartoon to attract
readers and amused them. But, hikbi, er, sigh, beginning last week I no longer
drew an illustration for our weekly newspaper's Northern Watch .

The editor-in-chief asked me and writers to add
another news article to spike the number of our news for our weekly
publication. Since I drew the political caricature for our editorial because
the real cartoonist left, I told her I’ll no longer make illustration since it
would add more man hours for my work as columnist and a daily radio
commentator.

My 26 cartoons in a row.

For a stint of six months and two weeks, I had
passionately drawn cartoons. Drawing, son of a gun, was my childhood past time!

I got the ire of my elementary and high school
teachers then because when they became a bore with their teaching, I sketched
at my notebooks and my parents reprimanded me when most of these teachers
reported my actuation to them.

Sabado, Enero 7, 2017

Rose Buenaflor, niece of Health SecretaryPaulyn
Jean Buenaflor Rosell-Ubial (like Agriculture Secretary Manny Pinol, both of
them are my town mate in M’lang, Cotabato) told me Ubial and her Iloilo based
farmer husband Edwin lived in a modest condominium in Pasay.

I staggered upon seeing the photos of Rose and the Ubials
inside the condominium, the DOH Secretary lives a modest life while directors
of government hospitals in the Philippines splurged with their unexplained
wealth like palatial mansions and fleet of expensive cars thanks but no
thanks to the up to 30 percent S.O.P or cut they fleeced from contractors and
suppliers.

S.O.P or standard operating procedure, a euphemism,
concocted by the malefactors in the government and their conspirators in the
private sectors are usually done when a contractor or supplier, say of
medicine, transact with a government office.

“Those at the
DOH are more corrupt, “I told Harold Barcelona on our daily radio program.

“They are not only Tulisan (Brigand), they are “Three-lisan”
(from a play of words Two-lisan to Three-lisan),” Harold declared.

***

Aside from the Bureau of Customs, Land Transportation
Office, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue that President Rodrigo Duterte called
earlier as most corrupt agencies, he should pounce too at the Register of
Deeds and those in the municipal and provincial assessors office.

If these officials choose to shoot it out with the police, the cops know already what to do like the way they did to narc pushers.

A corrupt assessor official could make a sleight of hand
tricks for a huge fee to declassify the land the vendor sells to the vendee
from commercial to either residential or agricultural.

Linggo, Enero 1, 2017

In case war breaks in the South China Sea between the aggressor
and island grabbing Mainland China versus Japan and the Philippines, the
Chinese would be facing formidable defensive weaponry from the Japanese
particularly.

As what U.S Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) shouted to Navy Lawyer Lieutenant Daniel
Kaffee,(Tom Cruise) at the flick’s A Few
Good Men:

“You can’t handle the truth!”

Can the Sinos handle the naked military truth I’m going to
enumerate below? Brace yourself if you cheered for the Chinese.

In my daily radio program at Sonshine Radio, I told recently
Denmark Suede, a pilot from Australia, about Japan’s insurmountable defenses in
case a shooting war erupts between her and the Chinks somewhere in the disputed
Senkaku Islets.

“Japan’s defense is
the best model how to deter China not to jut her air force and naval
juggernauts somewhere near the disputed Senkaku Islands and some parts of the
Japanese sea otherwise she would be humiliated” I stressed.

Citing the news article “Five
Japanese Weapons of War China Should Fear”, I and Denmark summarized by
quoting the salient parts of the article written by Kyle Mizokami.

JAPAN

“Soryu-class
Diesel Electric Submarines: Japan’s Soryu-class submarines, where 9
are operational while 12 are being planned, are some of the most advanced
non-nuclear attack submarines in the world. Four Stirling air independent propulsion systems allow the Soryu class
to remain underwater far longer than most diesel electric submarines.